


Apocalypse Soon

by Brumeier



Series: Bite Sized Fic 2017 [9]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - College/University, Earthquakes, First Meetings, Friendship, Gen, Prompt Fill, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 15:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11671680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: LJ Comment Fic for Free For All prompt:Any, any, new roommates forming an apocalypse planIn which Blair and Rodney are college roommates on the cusp of experiencing an environmental apocalypse.





	Apocalypse Soon

**Author's Note:**

> This is also my submission for the whatif_au Apocalypse challenge, and fills the AU: Apocalypse square on my Trope Bingo card.
> 
>  **Warning:** If you're coming for spot-on science, you may as well hit that back button. ::grins:: I'm sure this whole scenario is incredibly improbable. I have no regrets.

**Rainier University, Washington State, 1985**

The room shook, windows rattling and beds scraping across the floor. Rodney’s precious Commodore 64 was swaddled in blankets and secured in the laundry basket, all of his work carefully backed up on floppy discs that he stored in a plastic box. He himself stood in the doorway, braced against the metal frame while he used one foot to keep the door from swinging shut on him.

The tremors had been increasing in frequency, though seemingly not in severity. Classes hadn’t been canceled and, except for some issues with the power and the phone lines, people were carrying on as if nothing unusual was happening. One of the frats even had an earthquake party over the weekend, not that Rodney had been invited. No-one wanted an underage science nerd at a frat party.

There were other students in their doorways, too. The guy across the hall was thumbing through a Sports Illustrated.

“That’s three!” someone down the hall shouted out.

Three tremors in the span of four hours. Even Rodney knew that wasn’t a good thing.

When the shaking finally stopped Rodney closed the door and checked to make sure the computer was still snugly tucked away. It was getting to be an exercise in frustration, trying work on coding for his computer systems class when the tremors kept messing with the power. 

The door slammed open a minute later and Blair burst in, his curly hair even more unruly than usual.

“This is it, Rodney! Jesus, man, I knew this was gonna happen. We have to go.”

“Go?” Rodney stared at his roommate, a twisted feeling in his gut. 

They’d only been living together for a few weeks, two teenage prodigies put together by the housing committee. They both had such heavy class loads that Rodney and Blair had barely spent any time together, and what time they did have had involved making plans for what Blair was certain was the coming apocalypse.

“My buddy in Geology confirmed it. He’s been monitoring the USGS and PNSN, and they both agree that the shit’s about to hit the fan.” Blair slid open the closet door and started digging around inside, dislodging clothes from hangers as he did so. “Dr. Fitzhugh left; claimed a family emergency. But he knows what’s coming and he got out of Dodge. Just like we have to.”

“Are you sure?” Rodney’s heart was pounding. “I mean, it’s just some tremors. They’ve been inconvenient, but –”

Blair backed out of the closet, backpack in hand. “This is gonna make Vesuvius look like Old Faithful.”

Rodney was a physics student. He didn’t care about rocks or weather patterns or anything like that. But he was well aware of the danger that a massive earthquake posed, mostly because Blair had laid it all out in painstaking detail. They were in the Ring of Fire, and a big enough earthquake could set off a chain reaction of volcanic eruptions. The news was already full of reports of super hurricanes, killer tornado swarms, extreme temperature fluctuations, and tsunamis. It really wasn’t a stretch to think volcanoes might be next.

Blair called it catastrophic climate shift. 

Of course, Rodney wasn’t going to take the word of an Indiana Jones wannabe who said some South American shaman had told him the future when he was ten. He’d done his own investigating. Most adults wouldn’t talk to a scrawny kid Rodney’s age, even if he was a genius, so he’d deepened his voice and claimed to be from a local news outlet; he could be pretty convincing over the phone.

Rodney’s charade had gotten him through to a woman named Patty who was some kind of PR person for the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. She hadn’t told him anything, but the lack of confirmation was almost confirmation in and of itself.

_“We’re monitoring the situation very closely.”_

That was all she’d say, no matter what questions Rodney asked. The fact that Patty didn’t try to allay his fears or assure him that things were fine told Rodney the opposite must in fact be true. He just didn’t want to believe it.

“Where’s your bag, man?” Blair asked. He stuffed a dusty looking book into his backpack.

Rodney pulled his messenger bag out from under his bed. Blair had insisted he pack it with essentials in case they needed to leave in a rush: change of clothes, extra toiletries, food. In Rodney’s case he also needed his epinephrine injectors and a bag of hard candies in case his sugar got low.

Holding the bag in his hands almost induced a panic attack, and he had to consciously regulate his breathing. It represented the end of everything: his education, his career, his future, his Nobel. Everything he ever wanted, up in a cloud of volcanic ash and molten rock.

“So is there a plan?” he asked when he could trust himself to speak. “Or do we just…go?”

No offense to his roommate but he didn’t seem like the most organized guy. His side of the room was cluttered and messy – not that Rodney was super tidy or anything – and he always seemed to be running late.

“We’re going north,” Blair said. He dropped down on his bed, elbows on his knees, and looked intently at Rodney. “I think that’s our best bet.”

“I’m no climatologist, if that’s even a real thing, but it seems counter-intuitive to go north. If the Ring of Fire kicks off, the amount of ash in the atmosphere is going to make everything really, really cold.”

“I’m just looking ahead,” Blair explained. “My buddy in Environmental Sciences said the overall picture is pointing to increased greenhouse gasses from the amount of carbon dioxide released by all those volcanoes, which means eventually the temps are gonna rise. A lot.”

Just when Rodney thought things couldn’t get any worse. Also, how did Blair already have so many buddies on campus? Rodney himself had been too busy with classes.

“How far north?”

“Your native country.”

“You want to go to Canada?” Rodney tried to imagine bringing Blair home to Vancouver to meet his asshole parents, or his parents even being willing to take him in. “But isn’t that still in the danger zone?”

“Not if we go far enough north.”

“I’ll have to pack my winter stuff. You, too. If the temperature is gonna be dropping it’ll –”

“It’s cool, man. Evelyn’s boyfriend and his brother are visiting and their dad is loaded. They have credit cards, which, yes, is the epitome of capitalist excess, but the point is that they agreed to outfit everyone once we got on the road. May as well burn up that credit before our whole financial system collapses, right?”

Rodney didn’t know for sure, but he suspected Blair had been raised by hippies. “Rich kids are gonna buy us cold weather clothes?”

“Trust me. I’ve got it all worked out.”

Sure he did. Rich strangers were going to buy them parkas and boots for what might be the longest, coldest winter since the ice age. Well, Blair was right about one thing. Going north was a good idea because those people knew how to survive in harsh climates. Northern Canada especially was…wait. Northern Canada. 

Rodney snapped his fingers. “I think we have family in the Northwest Territories. My mother’s distant cousin or something, works for the RCMP.”

“You should call home,” Blair said. “Find out about this cousin. You think they’ll come with us?”

Rodney shook his head. “My parents won’t. My sister’s twelve, she’ll come if I ask her. What about you?”

“It’s just me and my mom, and she’s out of the country.” Blair shouldered his backpack and headed for the door. “Make your call and meet me behind Hargrove. I got us a ride.”

Rodney didn’t even bother questioning that, since Blair seemed to be the kind of guy who made connections. It was something Rodney’d never been particularly good at. He was too focused, too critical, too assured of his own genius; he’d heard all that and way worse. He supposed he should be glad that his proximity to Blair had facilitated his inclusion in the plan to evade the worst effects of the coming apocalypse, if such a thing was even possible. 

He called home and caught his sister as she was coming home from school. His parents were still at work, which was just as well since they wouldn’t have listened to him anyway. It didn’t take much to convince Jeannie to pack some things and be ready when they swung by to pick her up. She was young, but she was also smart. Almost as smart as Rodney. And she knew things had to be dire for him to leave school.

 _I’ll talk to Mom and Dad_ , Jeannie promised. _And see if I can find cousin Bob’s number in Mom’s address book_. She was still young enough to hope their parents would do the right thing.

Rodney double-checked his bag before he left the room, laundry basket in tow. He wasn’t about to leave his computer behind, however ludicrous it might be to assume he’d be able to use it if the apocalypse were well and truly upon them.

The parking lot behind Hargrove Hall was full of people, twelve or so of them with duffle bags and backpacks and nervous expressions on their faces. Naturally Blair had been able to convince other students about the impending environmental collapse. The only one Rodney recognized was Tamara, the busty blonde RA from his dorm. 

There was no sign of Blair until the blue and white shuttle bus, the one that ran students to downtown Cascade, pulled up with the horn blaring. The doors popped open and Blair popped out.

“Okay, guys. Let’s get loaded up.”

“How do we have a bus? No, wait. Don’t tell me. You have a buddy.”

Blair just grinned. 

Rodney started up the steps to get into the bus, but the driver took him by surprise. He hadn’t been expecting a young guy with floppy brown hair to be behind the wheel; there were older students in the group that seemed better suited to the job.

“How old are you? Do you even have a license?”

“Fifteen. And I have a learner’s permit.” The kid smirked. “Are you bringing dirty laundry?”

Rodney turned back to look at Blair, who was waiting patiently behind him. “Where did you find this guy?”

“This is _the_ guy. Evelyn’s boyfriend’s brother. Says he can drive anything.” Blair shrugged.

“I don’t think –”

The bus jerked, and Rodney tried to brace himself while still holding on to the laundry basket. He was ready to yell at John when he realized that the kid hadn’t hit the gas. It was another tremor, only this one felt much larger than the one he’d experienced just half an hour ago.

John reached out with one hand and helped keep Rodney steady. “Hang on, buddy.”

While the bus rocked Rodney looked at John, really looked at him, and saw that despite his light tone and smirky smile he was serious, and maybe just as scared as Rodney was. For some reason that made him feel a little better.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” a girl shouted from the back of the bus once the shaking stopped.

“Can you really drive this?” Rodney asked John. 

“Yeah. I really can.”

Rodney nodded, and slid into the seat behind the driver’s seat, stowing the laundry basket on the floor.

“Let’s get this party started!” John closed the doors and pulled out of the parking lot. He didn’t hit any of the parked cars or light poles, so maybe he really could do it.

Rodney turned to watch Rainier slip past the window, and tried not to cry as he wondered what the future held for him now.

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't sure what I was going to do for this month's AU challenge. I started a new installment of my Last Men on Earth apoca-series, but it's stalled. Then I saw this prompt, pondered who I could throw together as roommates, and this fic happened. Thanks so much to nagi_schwarz for the hand-holding on this one.
> 
> And before you ask, yes. I very well might be adding to this at some point in the future. ::grins::


End file.
